


Angels I Have Heard On High

by Bool_Ji



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Body Horror, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 14:02:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4438256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bool_Ji/pseuds/Bool_Ji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he was who we know today, Father Gascoigne had difficulty talking to women. Being set on fire changed things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels I Have Heard On High

**Author's Note:**

> Fic commission for a friend on Tumblr. Enjoy!

Everything hurts. Every single centimeter of skin complains in warbling widow’s cries, peaks of blackened flesh raised like supplicant hands hunting for God. He is a wasteland. He is just as blighted as the fields and villages of his home. Barricaded inside his own church, he found no mercy in the flames, only transformation into a shell for a hundred howling voices. He’s left pieces of himself from valley to doorstep, saw mice and lizards scurry away with flakes of char, fallen teeth, a little finger. Crows watched him every step of his journey, a voyage he doesn’t remember from the Hell in his head, waiting for him to drop dead and deliver their feast.

Something pricks his eyelid, pushes past his skin. Warm liquid fills a space inside him. It withdraws, pressure abates, and for the first time in unknown ages he opens his eye, and though his vision is blurred and crimson he beholds an angel.

When she speaks, she quiets his wailing nerves. “Easy now.” She touches his hand – he can feel it, a sensation other than pain – “You’re safe here. Sleep. We can help you.”

Gascoigne does not pray for death as he drifts away into darkness.

\- - -

“Her name is Viola,” Gascoigne says, weeks later, “ _Viola_. Music on the tongue. A meadow in bloom. Henryk, my friend, I confess to you: I believe I’m in love.”

The old hunter chuckles, pressing through a cobweb curtain. “And I confess to you: I am unfamiliar with your faith. Are you allowed to pursue a wife?”

A _wife_! Gascoigne doesn’t swoon, but the hand that flies to his heart is a subconscious reflex. To think that lovely woman would willingly swear to be at his side for the rest of his life… He’s glad the light in the dungeon is so dim. He would never live it down if Henryk saw him flushing. “I’ve recanted my faith. The way of the hunter speaks more truth to me than old tomes. God is cruel, but this path allows us to do something about His vile acts.” 

Henryk makes a quiet affirmative sound. “So when do you plan to propose?”

“Propose–” Gascoigne swallows his heart, mops a bead of sweat from his brow. “Propose, ah… Henryk, I have not spoken a word to her. I…I don’t know how. Does she yet see me as a husk of an insect? Some towering mutant? She is a nurse, and I am a bloodstained foreigner–”

“I’ve had three wives,” Henryk says, “Though they have passed from this mortal realm, rest their everlasting souls, they had one aspect in common. Take it from me, my friend: the quickest way to a woman’s heart is through feats of bravery. We are standing in the source of the scourge.” He smiles beneath his cap. “Understand?”

Gascoigne thinks he does

\- - -

He pays a jeweler to embed the blood gem in gold and crystal. Though his funds are meager, the look on her face as he presents the brooch to her is worth the amount a thousand times over.

“It’s lovely,” Viola exclaims.

“It’s the least I can do,” he says. He practiced this speech. “You’re deserving of a trinket as beautiful as your actions. As _you_.”

Smiling, Viola clasps the brooch above her heart, and Gascoigne feels his own pierced by the pin, by the radiant, daylight sharp sting of love.


End file.
